Chinese crude drugs or spices eg. Zingiber officinale, Eugenia caryophyllata, Allium sativum, have been used in medicine and in flavoring foods. Crude ginger is used as an anti-emetic and expectorant, an anti-tussive and accelerator of the digestive organs. Semi-dried old crude ginger is also used for stomachache, chest pain, low back pain, cough, common cold and as a cure for a form of edema being called “stagnate of water”. Zingerone is the major component which accounts for the spicy character of ginger; gingerol and shogaol are other pungent components in ginger. Gingerol has cardio-tonic action, suppresses the contraction of isolated portal veins in mice, and modulates the eicosanoid-induced contraction of mouse and rat blood vessels. Both gingerol and shogaol are mutagenic, whereas zinger and zingerone have been found to exhibit antimutagenic activity. Shogaol has inhibitory activity on the carrageenin-induced paw edema and platelet aggregation [U.S. Pat. No. 5,804,603, Background of the Invention].
U.S. Pat. No. 6,855,347 discloses a composition for treating gastric ulcer and a process for preparing the same, wherein the composition comprising an extract obtained from the plant parts of Aegle marmetos and Withania somnifra and from the plant parts of at least one member selected from the group consisting of eight plants, wherein one of them is Zingiber officinale. The extract of the composition is preferably an aqueous extract.
Japanese patent publication No. 2004-115536 discloses anti-Helicobacter pyroli potent product useful for prophylaxis and treatment of gastritis and gastric and duodenal ulcer, which comprises using one or more galenicals selected from Sophorae radix, Anisi stellati Frutus, Myristica fragrans, Isodon japonicus Hara, Swertia japonica, Florence fennel, Zingiber siccatum, Atractylodes rhizome, ginger, Saussureae radix and gayangae rhizoma.
It is concluded in the study of an article published in Anticancer Research 23(5A): 3699-3702, 2003, that ginger root extracts containing the gingerols inhibit the growth of H. pylori CagA+ strains.